This invention relates to a winding machine for winding a strip of series-connected drug bags formed by a drug packaging machine, and a bundling machine for bundling the thus wound strip.
In a conventional bundling machine of this type, a web of serially connected drug bags formed by a drug packaging machine is automatically cut into a plurality of strips each for a particular patient and distributed to the respective patients.
As shown in FIG. 11, this conventional bundling machine comprises a cutter 2 for cutting a web of series-connected drug bags formed by a drug packaging machine W into a plurality of strips S each consisting of three bags F containing drugs to be taken in the morning, afternoon, and evening of one day, U-shaped gutters 18 for stacking the strips for each patient, and a bundling unit 6 for putting a band B around the stack of strips S in each gutter.
As shown in FIG. 11, the gutters 18 are movable laterally one by one to the position opposite an opening 16 of the bundling unit 6. With a gutter 18 opposite the opening 16, the stack of strips S in the gutter is pushed out into the opening 16 of the bundling unit 6 where a band B is put on, and the thus bundled strips are dropped into a box 19.
Since strips of drug bags are bundled for each patient, it is easy for hospital personnel to distribute each bundle of strips to the corresponding patient. Since each strip includes three bags containing drugs to be taken in the morning, afternoon and evening of each day, patients can take their drugs easily simply by opening the bags one at a time.
But since each bundle consists of a plurality of separate bags each for one day, a more or less senile patient might mistake drugs to be taken in the evening for drugs to be taken in the morning, or take only drugs to be taken in the morning.
Also, when the band is removed, strips tend to become scattered, so that handling is difficult even for sane patients.
An object of this invention is to provide a device which can wind a strip of serially connected drug bags in such a way that patients can take their drugs in the right order with high reliability, and a device for efficiently bundling the thus wound strip.